Session 10 Video Transcription

Sandra: Hey, everyone. This is the tenth session and final session of the online seminar for Compassion Activism, and before we get started talking about the fifth practice – which is the practice of shared envisioning and compassionate non-cooperation – I want to take some time to talk about Orlando, the shooting that happened there over the weekend.

I know for a lot of folks, including myself, there are a lot of feelings coming up around it. I wanted to create a bit of a space for it and talk a little about: “what is the role of Compassion Activism in helping us be with what is going on?” Not just in this single incident, but just the history and the current context that has facilitated this event as well as the reaction that folks are having to it throughout society – throughout the world, actually.

I was processing this before the call, and a couple of different things came into my mind: 1) as I have been reiterating over and over again, is that first and foremost, is to acknowledge your own feelings. Your own pain, your own fears. The grief. The sadness. The anger. And that there’s no right or wrong to it. Sometimes in our society, we don’t allow ourselves to have strong feelings unless it’s over a very large incident such as a mass shooting or a death. It’s only in those more extreme situations that we are permitted in our society to actually have public displays of being justifiably upset.

It’s really hard and scary, and sometimes it can feel so very overwhelming for folks, so I really encourage you to continue to hold the space for your feelings. Continue to hold the space for your feelings, to just let yourself have them come up. Let them flow out of you. As we have been seeing in these sessions – with my coaching -- as you let the feelings continue to arise and you acknowledge them and you be with them, they shift. It can take some time. It can take a couple of sessions of sitting with the feelings, and they still shift, eventually.

The most important thing, I think, is just to hold the space so that those feelings have the ability to keep arising in you until you get to a point where you shift, and you know what you want to do, because you’re actually being called for. Now I know sometimes folks, when they get into the space, they feel like they have to do something. They feel so emotionally overwhelmed, though, they can’t do anything. So they feel bad that they’re not doing something, even though they’re

so overwhelmed that it’s actually fairly impossible to do, so it kind of builds upon itself, and once again, we’re in toxic swirl.

This is why it sounds simple, it sounds logical, for me to say to hold the space and let yourself have the feelings arise as they arise; but I know a lot of folks don’t actually do that. They kind of want to clamp those down and just move forward and get some stuff done, partaking in activism. Obviously, considering what happened, they want to just act.

If you feel called to do something in the midst of feeling a lot of those overwhelming feelings, by all means go ahead and do it. But don’t make yourself wrong if the most you can do right now is just grieve. Just grieve and be upset and be angry and be sad, because that’s really important, too. In time, that will shift, and you’ll be called forth into action and you’ll know what you need to do. And that’s the listening.

I’m also going to talk about something that you may or may not be really ready to hear right now, so I want to acknowledge that. As we’ve been talking about, we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves, take care of our own feelings, and we’re responsible for the actions that we take in this world. When we are able to do that, we can then hold the space for other folks to exist as they are, and not just how we want them to be. I’m about to give you my perspective on some stuff, which you may or may not be ready to hear because you’re still dealing with your own stuff that’s coming up for you, and that’s totally fine. I just feel like it’s important to talk about the other side of Compassion Activism where it’s not just about us, but it’s about other people as well. As I’ve mentioned in one of the other sessions, as you continue to do this work, as you continue to have this practice, it starts becoming easier for you to see into the other people’s potential realities and your speculations become more and more accurate about what’s going on.

I do this work around Compassion Activism, obviously to help people heal. That’s obviously incredibly important to me. I want people to heal from the pain of when they’ve been harmed. What I’m sometimes not as explicit about is that that’s not the end game for me. That is not the end goal for Compassion Activism for me, that you would just heal. That you would heal the pain of having been harmed. It’s actually so that we can stop harming ourselves and harming other people. That, for me, is the end goal for Compassion Activism.

What happens is that when we cannot be with our own pain that we are currently experiencing, we do usually one of two things: 1) we lash inwards; we repress ourselves, we silence ourselves, we hurt ourselves, emotionally, sometimes physically; 2) and/or we lash outwards; we distract ourselves from our own pain by blaming other people, by making other people wrong, and for them causing us that pain. All of that is running away from what is actually going on.

People who are happy and secure and self-confident know that they have some inherent self-worth. They don’t run around hurting people like that. If they happen to, they go, “Oh, did I hurt you? I’m sorry. What can I do?” That’s when you come from a place of healthiness. That’s a pretty standard reaction.

When I look at the situation -- and obviously, there is rightfully tremendous anger around how the role of guns in this control, the lack of gun-reform, the pervasiveness of homophobia, and how our laws, even though there’s been growing awareness, visibility, and acceptance, and of queer and trans folk, there have also been a rise of bills being passed around the country in the United States, and so all of that is true – but then, I look at the person, Omar Mateen, who was probably gay himself, by hearing the different things people have said about him…and comes from a family where homophobia is very strong, so there’s a lot of internalized hatred there.

When I look at him, I think about the level of pain that he must have been in where this was his best recourse to deal with it. That doesn’t justify it, of course. But what I see is the pain from that internalized homophobia. All the people in his life and all of the systems around him that reinforced that in his life and didn’t get him the support, didn’t give him the help, to deal with any of that.

For me, that’s why at the end of the day, we need to do these things on a policy level, on an institutional level – yes, definitely – and some of the most important work that we can do is to just to do the work within ourselves and with the relationships that we have because of the status quo of systemic oppression.

It’s everywhere, so there are people around us, ourselves included, who are really struggling with this, and don’t necessarily talk to each other about it. Omar Mateen, he took it to the extreme, obviously. But there are so many people who are struggling with that same pain.

The question is: when they’re in our lives, do we check in? Do we create the space to have that conversation with them?

When we keep doing this with different people, some of those people are going to be in positions of power where they can do the changes on the institutional level and the policy level, or maybe become involved in all of that. And that’s wonderful. And there’s always stuff we can do ourselves regardless if we’re engaged in more organized activism or not.

I kind of want it put it out there that Compassion Activism is really just about life. It’s really just, “How do we deal with all the fucked up shit that happens?” With love and justice for everybody, actually, starting with ourselves.

That’s just my little spiel that I wanted to talk a little about. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to say, but hopefully there was something useful in it for folks

and a different perspective that helped illuminated something useful for you. I don’t know, but this is all real. This is all very, very real. It’s not a bad thing that people are getting really present to it. If we ignore it, if we keep silencing it, we keep minimizing it, then we won’t deal with it.

Obviously, it would’ve been best had this never happened. I’m also heartened by the level of outpouring support within and to the queer community, particularly for queer and trans people of color, and the conversations that are happening in communities that don’t normally want to talk about LGBTQ issues. People who have really been on the outskirts of the conversation because it doesn’t really relate to them personally, and they’re seeing that it actually is relevant.

I think this is all part of the cultural shift. The thing is, this happened. So we can resist the fact that it happened and be caught up in a toxic swirl, a swirl of make-believe, of, “I never want it to happen.” It did happen, though. We should say, “Yes, yes it happened, and now what do I want to do about it?” That’s where I would like folks to take themselves. Say, “Yes, it did happen.”

This is just part of the course, unfortunately, in our society, taken to a different level of extremity. But this is part of the status quo being systemic oppression, so this has really gotten people more a lot more present to that. It’s both true that there’s rising awareness and acceptance of LGBTQ folks, and with that, there’s rising more homophobia and transphobia as we’re seeing. We just need to keep grappling with that reality and acknowledging, and choosing, “What are we going to do now?”

I kind of want to just leave it there. If there are things that folks specifically want for me to respond to around Orlando, I can. People can share in the chat box. I just want to create a little bit of space on the beginning of this session to talk about it because I know a lot of folks are coming in with feelings around it.

Josette: I haven’t seen any direct answers to that. A lot of folks are saying that they’re glad that we are talking about it in this moment, and it’s really weighing heavily. Most people commented for a breathing exercise.

Sandra: Breathing exercises, okay. Folks can close their eyes and get comfortable in their seats. I want you to take a couple of deep breaths. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Just feel your body, your lungs, get filled with the air, and then feel it being released. Keep doing that. I want you to really notice and appreciate the gloriousness of our bodies, that our bodies will do this, and breathe in, and will literally give us life, and breathe out, and it will give life to our plants. Plants breathe, they give life to us through oxygen. We breathe out, gives life to them. It’s incredibly important to appreciate, especially during times of grief.

I want you to put your hand over your heart, and say, “Thank you. Thank you for letting me live. Thank you for giving me life.” And just breathe in. “Thank you.” Breathe out. “Thank you.” Breathe in. “Thank you.” Breathe out. “Thank you.” Breathe in. Breathe out.

I want you to think about the last time you played or laughed. I want you to remember the situation. Maybe with your friends, maybe with your kids, maybe with family, maybe you’re watching something…I want you to notice what comes up for you. Notice where you’re feeling that. Maybe it’s not very strong right now, maybe it’s just a little bit, but I want you to notice remembering the smile, remembering the laughter. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be big. It can be small. Just notice where it is in your body. What it feels like. I want you to breathe into it. Breathe into it and nurture it. And say, “Thank you.” Breathe in. “Thank you.” Breathe out. “Thank you.” Breathe in. “Thank you.” Breathe out. “I see you.” Breathe in. “I thank you.” Breathe out. “I see you.”

I want you to go the heaviness, the sadness, the grief, the anger, the fear, in your body. Put your hand where you feel it. I kind of want you to notice what it’s like there, what’s happening there, what’s coming up. I want you to say, breathe in, “I see you.” Breathe out. “I thank you.” When I say, “I thank you,” not because we’re overjoyed to have this feeling, but because it means that we care. So we validate, we acknowledge this, within us. “I thank you,” breathe in. “I see you.” Breathe out. “I thank you.” Breathe in. “I see you.” Breathe out. “I thank you.” Breathe in. “I see you.” Breathe out. “I hold you.”

When I say, “I hold you,” just to be with it. Just to be with it, no more, no less. Breathe in. “I see you.” Breathe out. “I hold you.” Breathe in. “I see you.” Breathe out. “I hold you.”

I want you to ask it if it needs anything from you, if you could give it anything. If it told you something – maybe it didn’t, that’s okay – if it did though, you ought to know if you agreed to do it. If it didn’t tell you anything, just say, “When you’re ready to tell me, I’m here.”

So, going back to your breath. Say, breathe in, “I see you.” Breathe out. “I’m here for you.” Breathe in. “I see you.” Breathe out. “I’m here for you.” Breathe in. “I see you.” Breathe out. “I’m here for you.” Just kind of notice what’s coming up for you now, and breathe into that care. And remember, this is something you can do at any point of the day. Just breathe in and acknowledge and care.

I want you to start wiggling your fingers and your toes. Take some breaths, open up your eyes. Come back to here. And if anything came up for you, anything you’d like to share, as always, you can put it in the chat.

I want to talk a little bit about why I had you remember a recent happy moment where you’re smiling or laughing, why I actually started out there. It may have

been hard for some folks to get into that mood obviously given what’s been going on. At the same time, maybe for some folks, they are able to slip into it more. There’s no right or wrong to it.

In my Buddhist tradition, which is the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition – some of you are familiar with him, he is a well-known Vietnamese Zen master, well-known in the West – and he talks about watering the seeds of whatever it may be and how we have a choice about how we spend our time. Obviously, in this program, we’ve been focusing on the pain and healing from it; and there’s also lots of joy to have in this world, too. We just tend not to remember it as much. But what happens when we water the seeds of joy? This is not meaning to neglect when we are feeling pain. We can do both. What happens when we water the seeds of joy? Of playfulness? Of laughter?

There’s something I call “positive trauma.” I don’t know if there’s a term for it, but the way that trauma operates is that something happens to us that is overwhelming, and we feel powerless and helpless in the face of it, and we get stuck there because we don’t know what to do, so we get frozen in fear; and then we don’t want to engage with that same type of pain in the future, so our brain replays it over and over again as if it’s happening right now. Now, this could be big “T” Trauma, where you get flashbacks, PTSD. It could be little “t” trauma, where it could be baggage, where we get concerned or worried, or we make assumptions about what’s probably going to happen in the future.

So what happens is that because we keep cutting grooves into our brain with that fear and that pain over and over again, that’s what gets watered, so that’s what grows. Actually, it’s the same thing when we think about positive events. Remember, I asked you at one point to think about the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten. You all started salivating, you all got hungry, you all couldn’t even focus on what I was saying, you were popping up in that chat box about how you want to eat this and that. See? A bunch of you are smiling now.

That’s just a memory, but you’re all living it like it just happened, but it’s just a memory of something you’d eaten at some point in time. It’s like a memory of a memory. That is “positive trauma.” You can cut that groove deeper into your brain and you’re watering the seeds of joy. Watering the seeds of joy or playfulness. And it’s really incredibly important to do both.

In our society, we kind of get so fixated about doing the quote unquote “fun activities,” like fear of missing out type of stuff feelings. FOMO. We’re just using that to distract ourselves from the pain, and that’s not good. That’s not really going to help us out in the world. But when we have the ability to do both, that is powerful. As we deal with the pain, once we heal that, that actually turns into a place of power and freedom for us. We combine that with watering the seeds with joy and playfulness, that’s unstoppable.

It’s really important as you’re doing a lot of grief work that you’re also doing a lot of self-care, and take breaks from grieving. It’s really important when you’re doing intense grieving – or any type of grieving I’d say, not just intense – to take breaks and do something fun, which is not negating what had happened; it’s helping us have a little bit more spaciousness, so that we can all then come back to the pain, and have a little more reserves, feel a little more rejuvenated. So just kind of know that, because I think in our culture, we don’t know how to grieve. We don’t honor the grieving process, and it’s incredibly important. It’s critical, actually.

So I’m going to stop there. Josette is telling me I have some light on my face. I don’t know. I’m going to turn the blinds. Is that going to make a difference? That’s some tiger stripes. Nope, that’s worse. [laughs] Oh, but you know what? I can just open up the blinds. Oh, that’s way too much sun. We’re just going to have some lighting issues, that’s all. It happens.

If there’s anything else people want to specifically comment on or ask about, people can. If not, I’ll move on to the next practice.

Like I said, a lot of it is just be where you are and hold the space for that. Hold the space for where you are and trust yourself. And take breaks from the grieving.

Today, we’re going to be finishing off the last practice, which is the fifth practice of shared envisioning and compassionate non-cooperation. We talked about this last time. We mainly focused on shared envisioning. I’m going to do a quick review of that because how you lead up to it is actually a review of my entire model, and then I’ll expand more on the compassionate non-cooperation.

So obviously everybody has a situation, and I would not choose the Orlando shooting for your situation right now, as it is very fresh. At the same time, acknowledge that just might be where you’re at, and if that’s where you’re at, that’s where you’re at.

In order to get to a place where you can do shared envisioning – and there’s an order to this – is to actually go through the first practices, applying it to yourself and then to the other person in order to have that conversation. A lot of folks try to jump to the conversation with the other person when they’re still really in that emotionally charged space where they’re making the other person wrong, where they’re resisting reality, both their internal reality as well as what had happened externally, as well as the possibility of their internal reality having any legitimacy even from the other person’s perspective.

That’s where we’re normally coming into the conversation from toxic swirl, so obviously when we try to do that, it doesn’t work. Most of the times when we try to engage in a conversation from there, “Eh.” When you’re trying to make

somebody wrong or resisting reality, it’s not functional. You can continue doing that. I’m not saying you need to stop. But I’m just saying, “Think about the impact.” Are you getting the results you want? Probably not.

It’s really important to come through the first four practices before you move on to creating shared envisioning together. That’s when you’re actually dealing with reality. You can’t create something together, 1) if there’s a pink elephant in the room taking up all the space, and 2) if you’re not focused on actual reality of what happened as opposed to what you thought should’ve happened, if they’d known better they would’ve done differently, or if you weren’t so weak or whatever, you wouldn’t have let that happen. So once you can let go of all that resistance, that’s when you can deal with reality. So it actually did happen. What happened for you? What happened with the other person? Okay, now we can create something.

I want to reemphasize how important it is to go through that. Just to quickly review, it’s really through getting reconnected. Normally when we’re in a toxic swirl, it’s my perspective, the other person’s perspective [touches fists together], and my perspective, I’m trying to smash into the other person’s world and knock out their perspective because they’re obviously wrong. And they feel the same way. They’re trying to smash their reality into me and make me agree with them. You can’t create from there.

When you actually share your realities with each other and say, “Hey, this is my reality. What’s your reality?” and then they share, then you’re actually just meeting each other. You’re meeting each other with your communication. You’re connecting with each other. And then you’ll start to get a sense of where they’re coming from, and you identify with something you have in common. You want both of you to be happy. You want the project to do well. You both are caring people. It can real basic. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can just be that you don’t want to see people in pain. It can be basic like that.

Then, if you just say, “Well, you have your perspective, and I have my perspective. What do you want to do to meet this shared goal?” That’s really it. It’s not more complicated than that. What gets in the way of this conversation – makes this conversation so difficult to have – is the fact that you are running away from your internal reality and resisting their internal reality, which is why I’m saying you have to repeat the first few practices before you can get through it.

If you feel yourself getting stuck, then you need to keep practicing.

I want to move on to compassionate non-cooperation, because this might actually be really relevant for folks today. There’s going to be times when you do the work yourself, and you reach out to the other person – or maybe that person’s not somebody you can reach out to, maybe they’re no longer alive, maybe it’s like the incident where somebody else that you don’t even know

committed the violence, like in Orlando, and it’s still impacting you. Or maybe that person is abusive and toxic and it’s not somebody that you want to be sharing space with, that you want to be in contact with. Or maybe tried to have that conversation with them, and you both gave it your best shot, and you’re both like, “Huh. Can’t create anything.” So all of those things are possible. (39:52)

When you get to that point, and you don’t know what else you can do, this is where I think Compassion Activism comes into play. Compassion, as I’ve been saying over and over again, is not about the other person. The compassion is for yourself. The compassion is actually for yourself and the pain that you feel when you can’t work together, you can’t co-create something together. You have to understand, everything is invitational. Everything that we do to ourselves and to other people – particularly to other people – is invitational. We can’t control what the other person does. We can only invite them and invite them with an explicit yes/no/counteroffer as a possible response to it that you’re okay with. That’s how you make something invitational. You ask them to do something and you be clear that you can give me a yes/no or a counteroffer, a counteroffer being a different solution, a different option for you to consider. That’s what an invitation does. And they may just say “no” and you can ask them, “Well, what’s happening that you want to say no?” Maybe you can go down that path and it doesn’t go anywhere. But you can choose to disengage while hoping for their best, including being able to co-create in the future.

So by choosing to disengage, it’s not about needing to leave. It’s really about disengaging with that person around that situation. You can actually continue to engage around other situations potentially. Here’s the thing. The emotional charge of that person is gone, because you’ve actually processed that through the first few practices. So what happens is that most of the time, there’s a situation that arises with a certain individual, and you get resistant to it, you get caught up in a toxic swirl of make-believe world, and so anything related to that person is now tainted. It’s now emotionally charged. So you can’t do anything with that person at all. You don’t even want to be in the same room with them. You just don’t want to be around them at all.

What happens is, when you go through the first few practices and you reconnect with them, and you acknowledge each other humanities and perspectives, then there’s no emotional charge. The future is wide open for you. Anything can happen because you’re not being trapped by the past, because you already dealt with the pain and the fear that arose from that pain. You took care of it, so you’re actually acting responsibly around your own pain. Even if something happens, you know you’ll take care of it, so that fear is far less, or it might be gone entirely. You come back to your natural wholeness. So what happens is when you choose to disengage around that particular situation, that doesn’t mean you actually have to leave that person or that location at all. You can choose to engage in other ways with them, in other situations, or not. It’s up to you. It’s actually really different from what people usually end up doing where they feel like they have to

move out. They have to walk away. It’s reinforcing systemic oppression for them because they’re the ones that have to leave. It’s really fundamentally different because this is after you connected.

When you do this, a lot of times there’s going to be pain at the fact that you are able to co-create something together. I guess I’ve been saying is that grieving is a really important process that we don’t really encourage at all in this country. In a lot of societies, we don’t. Hopefully in some, they do. I don’t know of any actually, but hopefully in some they do.

When I talk about grieving, it’s really just the same thing of really holding the space for your feelings to arise. Usually, it’s a lot of feelings arising, so that’s why it’s a little bit more intense. Sometimes, a lot more intense. Just let it arise and then keep on acknowledging it and not run away from it. When you went through the effort of trying to connect with somebody and make and create something together, it means you really wanted something. You really wanted to see something in the world that’s different than it is now, and that didn’t work out. This could be anything from specifically activism related or policy changes, or it could be something like a romantic relationship that didn’t work out. That hope that you had that you would create something together in the world, it didn’t come true. And that sucks to varying degrees. I think that it’s important having the space just to give yourself that time to let those feelings come up – because you can give yourself closure – and when you don’t grieve, it’s not complete. It remains unfinished for you. That’s why it drags itself out and you swirl more in make-believe world. Grieving helps you stay focused in the actual internal reality that you have and dealing with it.

I want to stop here for a second and just take any questions that people have. I have some more to actually talk about this, but was there any questions?

Josette: Not so far. For folks on the phone, just remember that you can star-six to un-mute if you are not able to throw a question in the chat. Not so far, Sandra.

Sandra: I did the comparison of what usually toxic swirl looks like vs. compassionate non-cooperation. It’s the same language over and over again but it’s applied to a slightly different situation. When we talked about toxic swirl vs. gentle mindfulness, being in touch with our reality, or having consciousness raising inquiry, it’s the same language over and over again of resistance, of making somebody wrong. It’s just applied to what we normally do when we don’t want to engage with somebody.

On the left-hand side is the toxic swirl. On the right-hand side is the compassionate non-cooperation part. So oftentimes when we are still in an emotionally-charged place because we’re still caught up in a toxic swirl, we assume we know what’s best for them at the moment. I want you to think of a situation that you envisioned previously. I want you to reflect, “What was I

engaging in?” Because probably what you did in that moment, in that situation, is your common coping strategies and defense mechanisms. Maybe you assume you know what’s best for them. You know better than they do about their own selves. As opposed to just acknowledging that their internal reality is their internal reality. It could be different from yours. It doesn’t make your reality, your perspective different, it doesn’t make their perspective wrong just because they’re different.

We often do this to people who are less socially-conscious than we are, just kind of keeping that in mind if you’re struggling with who you might do this with. We also come at them in a coercive way, with this coercive expectation, coercive demand upon them, and we won’t accept a “no” from them. It’s not actually inviting them to do something with us, a “yes/no/counteroffer,” and that those are all reasonable acceptable responses. We also make them wrong as a human being if they don’t agree with us. If they do something that is hurtful to us, we write them off. We just write them off. That’s coming from a place of pain, obviously.

That also doesn’t mean that’s the only response that we can have. If you do this practice, you could see them as being a person with a different perspective and who has caused harm. For whatever reason, they thought this was their best option in that moment. Even though that’s not the option that you would’ve taken, for them that’s what they thought was true. So the point is not to make them wrong for doing what their best is – even if their best is incredibly shitty and harmful – but it’s to help if you’re so inclined, if you feel called to do so, to help them and prove what their best is, and understand what their best is right now and what they can do to make it better.

That’s where we’re getting really curious. Getting curious about what’s going on for them, where are they coming from. As I said when I was talking about Omar Mateen, I get curious and I think, “How much pain must he have been in for this to be his best option, is to kill as many people as he could before he died. Before he was killed. He knew that was going to happen, too.”

Like I said, it doesn’t justify or get them off the hook for what they’ve done, but it acknowledges their humanity. It acknowledges that they’re a human being and they all have a reason they do what they do. It makes sense in their world. The question is, “Why is this what makes sense for them in their world? Where are they coming from?”

What this opens up is the actual conversation. Even if you can’t co-create something with them, you can at least have a conversation about why you can’t co-create with them. That opens up the opportunity to really unpack what is really going on for them, which may lead to some healing. Just acknowledging what is going on, as people have been realizing in this program, is incredibly healing and freeing. Just having the conversation about why we’re resisting, why we’re stuck.

When people get resistant, I don’t tell them to not be resistant. I’m just being like, “Hey, I don’t want to and that’s okay.” That happens, too.

There are things that I know that quote unquote would be “good to do” or “should do” and I don’t want to. I just don’t want to. Why? What’s going on for me? And once I ask those questions, I get to the source of it, and I get free to choose as opposed to just being stuck. But when we’re in toxic swirl, we’re silent and resentful usually and there’s no conversation and we can’t do anything for the other person or for ourselves in that moment.

These are just some ways of comparing toxic swirl and compassionate non-cooperation. You may do other things, I don’t know. But these are kind of the standard things that arise. I want you to look at the left-hand side and note which ones you tend to do. If something you do is not there, add it.

The reason I’m asking you why to make a note of that is because if you don’t know what to look at for in yourself, how are you going to notice when it happens and choose to do something different? You can’t. If it happens in your subconscious and it’s dragging you, it can’t change. I’m asking you to make conscious your toxic swirl.

I want you to look on the right-hand side and know what your options are. It’s good if you write these things down, too, for later.

I want to just repeat that this is more of the same that I’m showing you in terms of shifting away from toxic swirl and just being in touch with reality. Mindfulness is just like a Buddhist term to capture that, but it’s just really being in touch with reality. By reality, I mean the three realities; that’s the key part. Being in touch with three realities, not the toxic swirl of one make-believe world. So hopefully this is helping you to get some of that repetition to play.

I’m going to put folks into breakout rooms and I want folks to kind of talk about what the difference is for them. What’s the impact of staying in the toxic swirl role vs. the impact that they see potentially if they’re engaging in a compassionate non-cooperation stance?

I’m going to give folks ten minutes. It is 7’o clock on my end, at least, and I’m going to give you ten minutes to speak. So at 7:10 we’ll be coming back. And it’s just talking about the difference and impact between doing the toxic swirl strategies vs. the compassionate non-cooperation strategies. That’s all.

Josette: And don’t forget if you end up in a room by yourself, that’s okay. You can do it on your own and share it in the chat when we all come back. And please wait, because your partner might be coming. They might not. But that happens as well.

[Please pause the video while completing the exercise.]

Sandra: Okay, we’re back. So I’d like for folks to just write in the chat box, and if they want to do it on the whiteboard as well, what did you learn? What did you learn as you were doing that reflection?

Josette: And for folks who don’t see how to write on the whiteboard, you can enter it into fullscreen, and at the top there, there will be a green box that says, “You are viewing Sandra Kim’s screen.” Next to that, there’s a button called “options” and you click on that, and there’s a button called “annotate.” Then, you’ll be able to write on the screen. We ask that folks keep shorter answers on the screen and longer answers in the chat box.

Sandra: Just to repeat, the exercise is just really around reflecting, what is the impact of engaging in toxic swirl strategies vs. compassionate non-cooperation strategies? What did you learn from that? And if anything came up for you?

I’m always entertained by people’s desire to write out these things on the whiteboard because I can’t make it into actual legible letters.

“I need to grieve.”

“Patience still needed.”

“’Nice’ and ‘kind” are not the same.”

Some people can also type in the chat as well.

“Able to self-regulate better when doing non-toxic swirl practices.”

“Workable solutions.”

“What they should’ve done.”

“The practices take time to learn.”

They’re practices, not to fix things in one fell swoop, but they’re practices that we never stop practicing. Someone asked me if everything was a practice for me, and my answer was, “Yes, pretty much everything is a practice for me,” because if it was easy to do and I didn’t need to think about it, I would just be doing it and I wouldn’t be thinking about it. It would just be unconscious again. Anything I’m trying, yeah, it’s practice.

Someone else says, “Toxic swirl is easier to slip into but harder to end with, compassionate activism is the reverse.”

Compassionate activism is harder to slip into, but once you’re in it, you’re noticing, things start to flow. Other people are agreeing that toxic swirl is easier to slip into and harder to end with.

“Fear versus love.” And that’s true, right? When pain happens, we have a choice to make. When we’re younger, we didn’t know we had a choice most of the time, but we have a choice to make when pain happens. We can choose fear, and we see where that leads us. It’s an option. It’s just not a very productive one. It usually ends up harming us and other people. Or we could choose love, or compassion as I’d like to call it. When we’re actually in touch with our pain, compassion naturally arises. I think when we feel the pain and we get caught up in toxic swirl, fear arises. So the key is always, “Are we in toxic swirl? Or are we being connected to our internal reality?” That’s always what it comes down to.

It looks like people had a good discussion. It’s 7:15 right now, so I want to give ourselves a 5 minute break. So folks come back at 7:20. We’re going to be doing a wrap-up. I’m going to be reviewing the model again that you learned in the first session and maybe have thirty minutes of open time where people can ask questions. So come back at 7:21.

Alrighty folks. We’ve got some folks in their seats, some folks not. I’ll wait one more minute.

Were there any questions about the compassionate non-cooperation that people have before I move on to reviewing the model again? People have any questions?

Josette: Nothing so far in the chat, but don’t forget, folks on the phone, you can star-six and talk away.

Sandra: And also, if you’re generally just feeling some heaviness, and not a lot of energy to engage as much with the content today because of things coming up for you around Orlando, that happens, too. I’m feeling that as well. And it’s real. Don’t make yourself right or wrong for it, it’s just what happened. And we can still show up to do this conversation, I appreciate that you are. Hopefully that you appreciate that I’m still here showing up for it. It may have not been quite the same the last session had we had it last time, but I think it’s valuable to be in community around us.

So, seems like no questions. Maybe after all this time with me repeating “toxic swirl,” “be in touch,” people are pretty solid on it. I’m going to come back.

So we are back to the original Compassionate Activism model. So the five practices are actually just a way of getting to this, to being able to create this

model. We’re 100% committed to a vision. We’re 100% acknowledging our current reality. And we’re doing this in community and in every moment.

I want folks – I don’t know if you can remember all the way back 10 weeks ago – what you all thought about this the first time we all talked about it. If you can remember, that would be great. If you can’t, that’s alright. I want you to give it what you know now about the five practices now and what I mean by being committed to a vision, while at the same time being acknowledging and accepting of the current reality. Now you know I’m talking about three realities and how by engaging in this, we’re able to know what we’re wanting to create in the world and we know where we are. So it’s a matter of dancing in the moment with ourselves and what’s coming up for us, as well as if we choose to engage with the other person. That’s always a choice that we make. If we do, how do we dance to the moment with them?

If we want to be seeing more care, more compassion, more justice, more love in the world, then who are we being in relationship to this person? What are we creating with this person? I once asked you, “What is your intention with this conversation?’ “What world are you creating through this conversation?”

What I’m doing the first few practices is just getting you in touch with where you are so that you can release it so that you can create that vision right now – with yourself, first and foremost – and then if you want to, with somebody else. This can happen in any moment – in every moment – we’re creating something. Is it intentional? Is it from the past? Is it from our values? Is it from our fears? The question is: are we aware of this? If we’re not: notice and be with it. Not necessarily changing it, just be with it, be with what’s going on right now. And then, as that gets released, you can make a choice about what you want to create next.

Always do this in community. I think doing this in community is super, super important, and I hope that folks now who are grieving what’s happening in Orlando that you’re reaching out and being community with folks. Harm happens in relationships and community. It’s not just the incident itself that happened but how people reacted to it, whether it’s the media, our friends, our coworkers, our family. Being able to be with folks who nourish you, who acknowledge you, that’s important because we take a lot of hits in the world. It’s important to come back into community to heal, get rejuvenated, get stronger, so we get back out better armed with more compassion. More love.

I want folks to think about what that model means for them now.

Josette: We also have a question about which vision you’re referring to?

Sandra: Oh, so by vision, usually, it’s just the social justice vision that you have. You want to have a workplace where sexist comments aren’t happening. You

want to have a relationship with your partner where they’re not making homophobic comments. Or you want to be with your family members and be able to address when they make racist comments. These are the everyday things that happen all around us. Most of the times, the way systemic shows up is not necessarily – thankfully – in the form of physical violence. Sometimes it is, unfortunately, as we know. But most of the everyday stuff are comments, are verbal things. That’s where we get the day-to-day pains. What do we want to create in those situations instead of that be normal? Instead of having microaggressions be normal. Because conversations are the foundations for everything. If we want to have any policy changes, how does it happen? It happens through conversations and relationships. How do we want institutions to change? It has to happen through conversations and relationships.

Some of the people that you know, or you yourself maybe, are in positions of power and authority. Other folks, are not, but maybe they know somebody who is. It’s a trickle effect. Six degrees of separation. You never know who the next person you have a positive impact will be. Who do you want to be? What kind of energy do you want to put out in the world? That’s what I mean by vision.

Does that make sense?

Josette: Abby, who asked, said that makes sense. We have another – not a question – but point of trouble. They write, “I’m having a lot of trouble with dealing with a person, how to come around with any discussion when they make promises and understand their agreements, and yet doing these really hurtful actions repeatedly: smoking in the house, burning incense, etc.” that they’re allergic to. “We’ve talked, it was agreed, she does it anyways and adds bullshit to it. I’m having a real tough time figuring out how to come around and discuss options and choices with her.”

Sandra: So this person has broken agreements, so the next logical question is to ask her why? Is she aware of impact on you? Presumably she is. Does she actually fully understand the impact on you? That’s something where you could share more of your internal reality with her, and then you inquire into her internal reality. She knows it has a real impact on you and that you’re highly allergic, and she has agreed to stop doing these things that set off your allergies, what’s going on for her that she doesn’t?

This happens all the time. I was actually just emailing someone on the break around this. They messed up. They said they were going to fix it. They reached out and tried to fix it, and they broke that agreement. And I’m left being like, “What’s going on?” So my instinct might’ve been like, “I want to take this away from you so that you don’t have this responsibility because you’re messing it up and causing problems.” I’m like, “No, let me inquire, what’s going on?” “I’m struggling to understand what’s happening” is what I wrote in the email. “So let’s

talk so I can understand what’s going on,” and what support does she need in order to achieve what she wants to get done?

That’s my role as a manager, how I approach that situation. It’s the same thing. You’re sharing your internal reality and you’re inquiring more into her. Sometimes we just want to skip over the fact that they broke an agreement and reinforce the agreement and not talk about the pink elephant, which is the fact that she broke it. That’s oftentimes our instinct. I don’t know if that’s yours, but I know that’s a very common one. That doesn’t really help because that’s not where you are. You’re where it’s already been broken, so that’s your starting point. That’s your current reality, so it’s kind of going deeper there before you move, because you can’t move on really until you really unpack that current situation.

Josette: We had a follow-up question from Emily. “What if you don’t even want to share more of what the full impact of what other people’s behavior is on you? I was in a situation where I was pretty much forced to reveal personal information I did not want to in order for someone to feel like my desire/boundaries were valid.”

Sandra: If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. Everything is invitational, including what you do for yourself. Now, does it make a difference? It does make a difference when the other person gets where you’re coming from. It makes them much more inclined because they can see your pain, they can see your struggle, they can see your pain, so they’re more inclined to do something about it because they know what the consequences are. If not, people are not mind-readers.

Now, does that mean that you have to? It doesn’t mean that you have to. You can make a simple request, and if it’s not something that is a huge demand on them – it’s not a big deal – then you can also inquire if they’re resistant. It’s not a big deal from my perspective, is it something bigger in your mind? There has to be generally some kind of inquiry though, I would say. Because if they’re stuck, they’re stuck. You can’t push them forward. Sharing your perspective will either bring them, will compel them, in the presence of your pain, they’ll be compelled to do something about it because that’s what compassion is. Or you can inquire into their situation, their perspective, as to why they’re resistant to the request, which is their right to do. Invitation means that you acknowledge that “yes/no/counteroffers” are all valid responses.

Josette: Emily adds, “I think in this situation it was very violating more so because this person is manipulative, passive-aggressive, and did not actually honor the agreements we made. I had to commit to compassionate non-engagement, which has been a bit of a struggle, to be honest. Thanks, Sandra.

Sandra: If you’re dealing with a straight-up toxic, controlling, abusive person, then the best thing is to engage in compassionate non-engagement, and you can

then turn to other people in your community for that support. Maybe something will come out of there. But going to your friends, to family members, folks that you trust, to be in support of the situation and what’s going on and having conversations with them, that would be more appropriate than having a conversation with somebody who is straight-up controlling, manipulative, gas-lighting…when you’re in it, your responsibility is to yourself, which is to do what you can to not be in it.

Josette: We have another situation. Khai writes, “I had a now former roommate who I was very close with last year. Our relationship fell apart and I moved in with someone after. I definitely understand her internal reality. According to my internal reality, it doesn’t make sense why she would be so angry with me. We haven’t spoken in almost a year, but she spends time with a lot of my friends. I’m not sure how to process this and find closure when there are unresolved questions.”

Sandra: So your reality is about you. It’s not about her. You don’t know what her reality is. It’s good that you acknowledge that. You can just ask. “What happened for you? It’s been awhile, it’s been a year.” Like I said, if you can sit with your internal reality and take out the emotional charge, you’ll be able to engage in that conversation with her with greater ease. Now that it’ll be necessarily fun, but it can be just another conversation. Instead of focusing on why she’s mad, and being like, ”Well I wouldn’t be mad in that situation, I don’t understand your reasoning that you shared about why you’re mad, because I wouldn’t do that.” I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about obviously, but I’m just kind of guessing, speculating. If you could just sit – let go of her – and just sit with yourself. What’s the pain that you feel? What’s the feeling that you feel? What’s underneath that? Is it frustration? Is it anger? Is it resentment? Keep being with it until you get to the source of it. Then, take care of that pain and that need. Like I said, if you listen to yourself and you feel called to have that conversation with her, if you’re coming from a place of acknowledging and accepting reality as it is, and being curious about where she’s coming from and acknowledging that she has a totally different reality – her reasoning for being angry at you may make no sense to you because you would never do it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real for her, it’s real for her, if you can acknowledge that for her – it shifts. Because like I said, it’s the resistance that makes things emotionally charged. Focus on getting in touch with your own reality and acknowledging that, and inquire to her internal reality and acknowledging that. You don’t have to agree with it. It’s still real, still legitimate.

Josette: Khai adds, “I’m afraid she’ll attack me when I ask because that’s what happened when I asked before.”

Sandra: So that’s valid. If it’s somebody who is controlling, abusive, exploitative…that’s all very valid reasons why you don’t want to engage with that person. It’s also really important to get in touch with yourself because the

resistance, the emotional charge of the situation, makes things very muddy. “I don’t know what your situation is.” Until you go through that process with yourself where you just focus on yourself and what are you feeling, and what you need…it’s all muddy. It’s all conflated. What hurt. What she’s going through. What she’s doing to you. What you’re feeling. It’s all messy. From the way you’re talking about it, it makes me feel like perhaps you haven’t done the first three practices with yourself yet. I don’t know, maybe you have. But it sounds like you might not have yet. That’s my guess.

See what comes out of there, because if you can bring yourself that closure, if you can handle it yourself, maybe that’s all you need. If you listen to yourself and that’s all you got, that’s all you need to do, then there you go. Maybe it’s something you want to have a conversation with other people, your other friend circle perhaps, then you know that’s what you’ll feel called to do. I don’t know if you should talk to her or not. What I’m saying is you need to listen to yourself to know what you want to do.

Josette: That was it, I think, for folks that were looking for specific advice. We have another comment regarding how “it’s difficult to not want to just control the person.” I’ll just read it. Emily says, “I noticed how hard it is to focus on just me. I keep coming back to this feeling of wanting to control other people’s perceptions as if I can’t truly transcend the shitty situations or grow or become a better human being unless other people see me or understand me the way I want them to, especially in situations like Khai’s, where there’s unresolving issues that you can’t control.” And everyone’s like, “Yes.”

Sandra: You see how you give up your power when you did that, when you made everybody else responsible for how you feel. People do it all the time. I’m just saying that’s when you give up your power. You can continue doing that if you really want to, I’m just saying it’s not going to work out for you very well probably. I’m not trying to be flippant about it, but this is why I ask you, “What is the impact of being in toxic swirl?” I’m not even saying toxic swirl is good or bad or right or wrong. I think it has a toxic impact. I think it’s harmful. I think it doesn’t get you where you want to be in the world. It doesn’t create what you want to create in the world. It’s very counterproductive usually. That’s not right or wrong. That’s just what you’re doing.

I would say when you struggle to focus on yourself, you might just want to sit on the impact of it, and that’s going to suck. You’re going to be sitting in the impact of it, and you’re going to realize how ineffective and how toxic that toxic swirl actually is. If you give present to that, it’s really shitty. That may be what you need to motivate you to try something else. Like I said, don’t make yourself right or wrong for it. If you feel stuck and you’re like, “I can’t focus on myself, I just want to focus on them. And I think these things.” Okay, you think these things, alright. That’s what you’re stuck in.

Everything is still your internal reality. It’s just swirling. If you could be like, “Hey, this is my internal reality. My internal reality is toxic swirl. Okay, I got that. This is what’s coming up for me. I feel powerless, I feel helpless, I feel voiceless. Now, this is really shitty. Okay, now I want to try something different.” That’s probably what’s going to happen. If we’re stuck and you can’t get out of toxic swirl, then just acknowledge that you are in toxic swirl. It’s not right or wrong. It’s just where you are. Then acknowledge that. Sit with it. Don’t feed it. That’s what’s different. You’re not feeding it. You’re just sitting with it. People get that distinction. When you feed it, you’re actively engaging it. You’re watering the seed of toxic swirl. You’re like having this ongoing conversation in your mind, literally saying stuff. Probably you’re talking really quickly, too. It’s something people often do.

When you’re just sitting in toxic swirl, just noticing what’s coming up for you, like what I’ve been teaching you – where are you feeling it in your body? What’s arising for you? Things slow down a bit. You get more in touch. There’s a little more spaciousness. Get mindful of your toxic swirl and see what happens.

Josette: We had a request to go over the part where you were referring to focusing on how they break the rule vs. reinforcing the rule.

Sandra: Say something happened…you talked about it with the other person, you came into an agreement about how you’re going to do things differently. Oftentimes, people you live with, your partners, your roommates – you have house rules, who does what cleaning, who’s responsible for what – or maybe it’s a coworker or a supervisor or somebody you manage, just something where you have some explicit agreements around how you’re going to act towards each other and what you’re going to do. It happens all the time where they say they’re going to do something and then they don’t do it. So the important thing to note is that there’s a reason they didn’t do it. You just don’t know what it is. They may not know what it is. So it’s important, instead of just being like, “You said you were going to do it. You should’ve done it. Do it.” Well that’s just trying to force the issue forward instead of acknowledging what happened, which is that they didn’t do it. They broke the agreement. Well, why? That’s the question. A lot of times, it’s just that they forgot, to be quite honest, because it’s new for them.

I know that when people are trying new things – when I ask new staff to do something, I know the likelihood that they’re going to forget is pretty high. It just is. I just have to be a little bit more mindful. A little bit more with checking in with them around that. And the other thing is that people aren’t mind-readers. People don’t get necessarily what the impact is, especially if it’s not how they would respond to something. As we’ve been talking about, people usually assume that the way they react to things is the way other people should and do react to things. You do it, you know you do. Other people do it to you, too.

There’s lots of reasons. Sometimes, they never really intended to keep the agreement. They had absolutely no intention. You don’t know. It could’ve been

any of those things, or a combination of them. Or something else completely. So just check in. Check in, because there’s some learning there. You’ll learn more about this person, they’ll learn more about themselves, and then you can see what the next steps should be.

It may be to put in additional support, like another check-in, or you can ask them, “Do you want me to ask you about this later?” When I’m with somebody and they’re going to change their behavior somehow, I ask them, “What can I do? Would you like me to do something when you don’t follow through? Would you like a reminder?” I ask them. It’s an invitation, and they let me know if they want some sort of support. Sometimes I ask them, “Well, what do you want me to do if you repeatedly aren’t doing something?” That’s a possibility. That’s the conversation that you could have. If you find out that you have this conversation and they repeatedly don’t follow through, well now you know that this person is not trustworthy and you can act accordingly, which is to stop asking them to say “yes” when they constantly say “no,” and that’s a relationship that you might want to rethink or recalibrate.

Any other questions? This is the last ten minutes of the thing, so people kind of have burning questions. We could do it.

Josette: I don’t see any other questions. Oh, we’ve gotten a request. Go ahead.

Cassie: Hi, this is Cassie. I had a question. Can you go over the difference, when you were talking about the difference, between “and” and “but”?

Sandra: So this is a really useful little hack, a linguistic hack. So when we say “yes but” versus “yes and,” there’s a different energy that gets created. Think about your situation. So you could say, “Yes, they said something hurtful, but they don’t think it was hurtful.” That’s a common situation. When you say that, “Yes, they said something I think is hurtful, but they don’t think is hurtful.” Notice the energy from that. How much opportunity, possibility, for conversation is there? And compare that to, “Yes, they said something I think is hurtful. And they don’t think it’s hurtful.” “Yes, they did something I think is hurtful, and they don’t think it’s hurtful.” Just notice what’s coming up for you in terms of how much space and possibility there is for an actual conversation. You could type this in the chat box – folks can – but most folks when they do this, they often feel like the “yes, but” that there’s a period at the end. There’s no movement afterwards. You’re stuck in that “but.” You’re stuck in that contradiction. It means that it’s hard for both realities to exist. It’s where you’re having them hit up against each other. When you have a “yes, and,” it feels more open. It feels like there’s more possibilities, there’s more opportunity to have this conversation. Not that it’ll necessarily go in the way you want it to, but at least you have an opening. People get a little more creative. People actually start having ideas and brainstorm sometimes, because the “yes, and” says, “Yes, I have my perspective, and yes they have their perspective. They both exist. So they’re not

butting up against each other. They just coexist.” That’s actually acknowledging the different realities in just a little linguistic formula.

Josette: We had another question about….can we review what goes on for the monthly workshops? I think they’re referring to the Q&A sessions?

Sandra: So bimonthly Q&A sessions…we’re going to see. I have a couple of different ideas and it’s a new format, which is why I’m not entirely sure what’s going to be best. I’m going to experiment. The first one’s going to be this Thursday 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific, and I’m going to do probably a very quick little review. Just flash the five practices, and then I’m going to just take questions. Probably I’ll do a deeper coaching where I actually walk somebody through the mindfulness practice, applying it in real time. We’ll kind of see. I don’t know how much structure I have to give these things, to be quite honest, because I gave the full overview of all the five practices during that online training. At the same time, this work, it takes practice. We’re going to roll with it, experiment it, to see where folks are. I could see in the future, I may have a little more lecture presentation combined with Q&A but for now, I’m just going to leave it open and see what happens.

Josette: We have another question. “Can we still receive individual coaching?”

Sandra: Yes. You could still receive individual coaching so just let me know when you want to schedule it. There’s a form on the website.

I do want to share what Sheila said. Can you share what Sheila said?

Josette: Sheila said, “This has been a positive traumatic event, LOL. Thank you so much. These tools will be very helpful, fit my needs perfectly. I went from how to cope with my pessimism and frustration to focusing on my experience, needs, and self-care, and was able to address past trauma.”

Sandra: I’m going to be doing future trainings as well. I actually am intending to create a couple of different new programs. One is for managers and leaders of organizations just because – imagine if your supervisor actually could have these conversations with you and could deal with the fact that they’ve been a pretty shitty supervisor with you. Or if you are a supervisor, there’ve probably been moments where you’ve been a domineering supervisor or an absentee supervisor and being able to deal with that pain and do something different. That’s going to be happening.

I’m also going to be doing another program in a month of compassionate activism to help people who are struggling with their whiteness and their white privilege and how that’s showing up for them. There’s tremendous pain and understanding the racial history of this country and the context that we currently

live in. That’s another thing that I’m going to be doing in the fall. Be on the lookout for that.

As always, I want to end with the final takeaways.

So folks just want to take a moment – and think about the whole program – if there’s one thing you would want to convey to someone who was interested in compassionate activism, what would that be? The main insight that you gained that you want to spread to the whole world, and putting it in a chat box.

“Breathe and listen.” Yes. Breathe and listen and invite. If you just remember that, you’re set. You can even put that on your wall. Breathe, listen, invite. That’s it.

“Growth.”

“Pause and get curious.”

“You and your feelings matter. They don’t need to be legitimized by others, and other people matter in the same way.”

“Big takeaway already is recognizing great questions, to come into better communication, helping create allies, work things that. It does everything. Question self first, then them.”

“That my feelings matter.”

“That compassionate activism is first and foremost about compassion to yourself.” Yes. Yes, yes, yes. If there’s one thing, really, it’s just take care of yourself. Listen to yourself. This is about you. You’re the one who needs to wake up and look at yourself every morning every single day.

“Multiple realities. Holding that they’re all true.” They’re all happening at the same time. They don’t negate each other.

“The world is filled with people who want to heal themselves in the world.”

“I really saw how much I want to be with myself. I realized how tapped out I am on trying to be compassionate to others.”

If you feel tapped out in feeling compassion to others, be with that. Check in on that. Get in touch with that feeling. What’s going on there?

As my spin on Yoda says, “Just be. There’s no try. Just be.” Be with yourself. That’s the greatest gift you can do. Both the greatest gift for yourself and the world. Imagine if everybody can just be with themselves as they are in that

moment. Can you think what a difference it would’ve made had Omar Mateen had been able to be with himself as he is? This is why I keep trying to make this work as accessible as possible. Please share with other people because we need to do this work in community. The more people you have in your life at your friend circle, at your family, at your workplace, the more support, the more shared language you’ll have around it. The more shared language, you can check in with each other. You can say, “Breathe and listen.” “Are you inviting me?” You have these catchphrases and they instantly know what you’re talking about. It makes a huge difference having this community in place. This is great, obviously, but having it physically around you is even better.

It’s 8:01 and we’re at the end of our session. I want to thank everybody who keeps showing up. You keep coming to these sessions. You keep watching everything. Reading everything. It’s been a real joy to see folks go through this process. Where you were all at in the beginning, you were all hella resistant to the model, to the practices! Not everybody, but there was definitely some resistance. And then you were like, “Hey, I think Sandra might be onto something.” “Oh wait, there’s a difference when I do it.”

Like I said, don’t trust me based on my words. Experiment, try it out, and if you’re struggling, email me. Get coaching from me. I’m here for you. Keep trying it out, see what happens. The worse you have to lose is just doing what you’ve always been doing, so keep trying it out. See what happens.

Thank you so much. Take care, everybody.

Josette: Thanks everyone! We’ll still be in the Facebook group so keep in touch that way. Don’t forget to join if you haven’t.

Sandra: And remember. I sent you all the coupons again. I’m going to send you the coupons again the next time to enroll into the training program that’s currently running. You might have your own reasons, I don’t know, about why you don’t want to join. But I, for myself, if I was you, I would just do it because it’s free. Bimonthly meetings that you can continue to get help, get re-grounded in this work. Just saying.

Josette: You can join the Facebook group if you go to the course login on the Everyday Feminism site. There is a tab or button that says “join Facebook group” and there’s instructions there.

Sandra: So Josette’s talking about the Facebook group. I was talking about the three-month training program. In the three-month training program, in my last emails to you reminding you about the weekly sessions, they’re the coupons. They’re in it. I’m going to send it to you in the next email. It’s been in your emails. Just look at that.

Bye everybody. Take care.